


How We Learned How To Survive

by agent_of_weirdness



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe, I don't even know if they're going to get together or what, I don't know where this story is going, Snape Lives, shrug emoji, that's about all I got
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-26
Updated: 2017-07-25
Packaged: 2018-12-07 02:43:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 19,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11614242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agent_of_weirdness/pseuds/agent_of_weirdness
Summary: “Tell me, boy. How far would you really go to keep this man alive? Think carefully, Harry James Potter, and answer honestly. For the life of Severus Tobias Snape, what would you be willing to sacrifice in return?”





	1. Prologue/Chapter 1 – The Keeper of the Thread

**Author's Note:**

> I've decided to post all the works in progress that I have languishing on my hard drive, in the hopes it will lead to me working on all of them more regularly. If you read my first story on AO3, M. Sue Smith and the Dark Wizard, then you know that I'm terrible about always having long, long hiatuses between updates. 
> 
> I've been working on this one since about the time I first started posting M. Sue Smith and the Dark Wizard. I got stuck on what happens between what's happened so far and what I know happens later, which is the same problem I have for everything I've been trying to write ever since I got started writing stories, about ten years ago.
> 
> Anyway, hope it's not a waste of your time seeing as it'll probably take me another ten years to get even close to finishing it.

 

**Prologue**

 

              _“I’ve got to go back, haven’t I?”_

_“That is up to you.”_

_“I’ve got a choice?”_

_“Oh, yes. We are in King’s Cross, you say? I think that if you decided not to go back, you would be able to…let’s say…board a train.”_

_“And where would it take me?”_

_“On.”_

              They sat in silence on the station bench, the young, dark-haired man leaning on his elbows with his head bowed low over his knobby knees, and the old man looking around at their surroundings curiously through half-moon wire spectacles, thoughtfully stroking his venerable silver beard—the end of which hung down well past his own rather knobby knees. Both of them were dressed in long, voluminous robes: plain black for the young man, while his elder’s were deep blue and spangled with tiny golden stars. Around the pair, a King’s Cross station as it had never appeared in life had taken shape from the strange bright mist that had surrounded the young man when he first awoke.  

              If he had not remembered dying, Harry would have known by the strangeness of their surroundings that something was amiss; besides being too clean and too white, the station was far too quiet and empty. King’s Cross had always been filled with bustling travelers whenever Harry had passed through it before.

              Of course, he did remember dying. There had been a flash of green light, just like the one that often illuminated his bad dreams, and then he was here, lying on the stone floor. He had never expected to open his eyes again after that, much less to be granted the chance that his mentor was now presenting to him. He had not expected it, and he was not at all sure he welcomed it.

              King’s Cross was the first bridge he had crossed into the world where he truly belonged. In that context, he supposed it made sense that his version of the space between life and the afterlife looked like the train station where he had embarked and returned from Hogwarts each year of his schooling.

              His head was already spinning with all that Dumbledore had just shared with him, at long last—the truth about the connection between himself and Voldemort, the history of the Peverell brothers, Dumbledore’s bitter past experience of the Hallows, his close relationship with the teenage Grindelwald and its terrible, tragic conclusion.

              And now he was being told that he could return to the fight with Voldemort at the school if he chose, alive and totally unharmed and free of the soul fragment Voldemort had accidentally bestowed on him.

              Harry looked up at the sky through the great glass dome above their heads. It was blue, just like the day he had first seen King’s Cross—the real King’s Cross. The sight cheered him in spite of his overloaded brain. He’d thought that he would never see another blue sky again. It appeared that the rules were bending for his express benefit once more.

              A face flickered briefly in his mind’s eye, scowling in dark disapproval, and he could suddenly hear the soft, cold, cruel voice that belonged with it, as clearly as if it spoke aloud into his ear: _The usual rules do not seem to apply to you, Potter._

              He wanted to protest: _I never asked for this! I never asked for_ any _of it! All I ever wanted was to be ordinary, but I never got asked what_ I _wanted._

He closed his eyes. Wanted or not, the chance was laid before him, and he was now forced to weigh the price of taking it against the consequences of refusing.

              “I’ve got to go back then, haven’t I, Professor Dumbledore?” he asked flatly, staring at the floor between his feet without seeing it.

              “I think,” replied the old man carefully, in a professorial tone his former pupil recognized well, “that if you choose to return, Harry, there is a chance he may be finished for good. I cannot promise it. But by returning, you may ensure that fewer souls are maimed, fewer families are torn apart. If that seems to you a worthy goal, then we must say good-bye again, for the present.”

              Harry looked up again. He did want to do whatever he could to erase Voldemort’s mark upon the world, and heal the wounds his reign of terror had left in its wake. Of course he did. It was in his nature, what Hermione had rightly called his “saving-people thing”. He wanted to help, to protect people, and he was ready to sacrifice whatever he had to in order to do so.

              But it was so peaceful here, and quiet. He could not remember ever feeling this tranquil, or so utterly safe. It was a nice change from the normal pace of his life.

              Harry had never put much thought into the afterlife before; he had been too busy trying to survive to consider the alternative. He knew very little about religion in either of the worlds he had lived in, but an ethereal version of King’s Cross did not fit with any description of the afterlife he had ever heard of.

              There was a train now, waiting at the platform nearby, he realized, a train he was certain had not been there when he and Dumbledore had sat down to talk; somehow it had managed to approach without a sound. Maybe it had not pulled up at all, but simply appeared out of the air. And what would happen if he were to board it? Where would it take him?

              Where did he even want to go, anyway? It was not really a question Harry had ever had the luxury of asking before. He wasn’t sure he had an answer, either. For so long, he had been focused on destroying Voldemort before Voldemort could finally succeed in killing him. He had not dared to think about a future beyond Voldemort, because for a long time now he had not truly expected there to be one—not for him, anyway.

              If he was honest with himself, Harry had to admit that he resented being “The Chosen One” quite a lot. Not just for having to be the one to succeed where those far older and wiser had failed, but also because he had been led to it like a calf by the nose, unable to choose a different path even if he could have brought himself to turn his back on the prophecy and the burdens it placed on him. Though he could not ever have stood by silently while Voldemort molded the world to fit his dark vision, Harry could not help but hate the way he had been steered towards this conclusion—by fate, by Dumbledore’s machinations, by his own blind faith in his mentor, by the choices of his parents and their friends, by so many forces, far out of his control.

              With his death, Harry was meant to destroy both Voldemort and the bit of his soul attached to Harry in one neat fell swoop. But it was hard to appreciate the logic of Dumbledore’s plan when it so clearly had required him to live just long enough to give his life at the right moment, making his survival merely a nice bonus—a hoped-for result, but ultimately unnecessary for the plan’s success.

              And even after he’d sacrificed everything without hope of recompense, it _still_ was not enough. Harry found himself in the same position all over again. Now that he was dead, he did not really want to return to the world of pain and terror and grief waiting for him if he chose to live again; he’d had more than enough of all three in his short, troubled life, far more than his fair share.

              Even though it meant he no longer had to sacrifice his life after all, Harry was still angry. Why did he have to make this choice? Hadn’t he done enough yet? Hadn’t he earned the right to rest, at last?

              Yet he could not rest, knowing that Voldemort was still alive and inflicting pain on so many people. Not if there was anything Harry could do to stop it.

              As he imagined it, Harry realized that this was what he wanted, even more than he craved peace and an ordinary, quiet existence: he wanted a world without the threat of Voldemort’s shadow hanging over it, and he wanted to bring that world into reality himself, with his own two hands.

              He couldn’t very well stay dead out of pique while other people were dying, after all. Maybe if he had understood the truth from the start he would feel better, but then again maybe it would have just made things that much harder. Harry liked to think of himself as brave, but those last precious minutes of life, spent walking willingly to his death, had almost been more than he could bear.

              Besides, things could be a lot worse. He could be in Snape’s shoes, dead for good before ever getting to see Voldemort finished, having everyone think he was some kind of murdering scum. Harry winced, remembering every time he’d cursed Snape and wished him dead. Harry knew he could never have done the things Snape had done, things that had ultimately helped them to get this close to winning the war. He could never have been clever enough, even if he had been brave enough.

              Dumbledore had put Snape to use too, Harry realized suddenly, in an even crueler way than he’d used Harry. And yet, he was sure that Dumbledore had cared about them both a great deal. Somehow, that made it both easier to accept and harder to understand.

              Blaming Dumbledore, tempting as it was, would not help matters; the old Headmaster wasn’t the one responsible for Harry losing his parents and becoming an accidental Horcrux, nor for Harry being set on an inevitable path to kill Voldemort or die trying, even if he had manipulated Harry’s life here and there (or everywhere, more like) to help things along. Harry had been boxed in by his own nature as much as by Voldemort’s; Dumbledore had just made the best of what he’d had to work with.

              It was Voldemort who had ruined not just Harry’s life but so many, many others as well: so many dead, or maimed, or driven mad, and all of their loved ones left to grieve. It was Voldemort who deserved the blame, and it was Voldemort who needed to pay the price for his crimes if he refused to repent them.

              Still, truth be told, Harry was not feeling particularly disposed towards taking the Headmaster’s advice at that moment. Every time he thought of how Dumbledore had counted so much on a wild theory, no matter how accurate it had turned out to be, he wanted to scream in rage, or break something.

              Even worse, realizing what it meant: he had been Voldemort’s unwitting Horcrux, all this time. It explained so many questions Harry had never been able to answer: how he could get into Voldemort’s head and know what he was feeling and thinking, even from thousands of miles away, for one. He wondered if secretly having part of Voldemort’s soul might even have to do with the “power the Dark Lord knows not” from Trelawney’s prophecy about the two of them.

              Although Dumbledore had always maintained that the strongest power Harry had was his capacity to love, and the love his mother had possessed for him, that a fragment of Voldemort’s own soul would act like a magical bullet-proof vest to shield Harry a second time from the Killing Curse was surely not a power that Voldemort would have anticipated, either. And being able to speak Parseltongue had come in handy more than once. It was a shame; Harry strongly suspected that particular skill was lost to him for good. Still, it was worth losing his Parseltongue ability to be rid of the connection keeping him tied to Voldemort, and keeping Voldemort tied to life.

              “And I know this, Harry: you have far less to fear from returning here than he does,” his companion continued, jarring Harry from his reverie.

              Dumbledore inclined his head slightly towards the station’s only other occupant, huddled beneath a chair a few meters away and still wailing piteously every now and then, though it seemed to have given up on hoping that there would be any response to its cries. Harry flicked his eyes over in that direction also and frowned.

              The former Headmaster’s piercing gaze lingered on the creature shuddering on the cold floor. Its flayed and tortured skin was flushed a livid red around the scaly, rough and cracked patches of flesh that mottled its body, a gruesome sight in the dreamy white glow illuminating the station. Its whimpers had died down some while they had talked, but it still shivered and twitched in obvious agony.

              The old wizard turned away from the creature with a grim expression, pausing to rub tiredly at his nose where his spectacles rested. As he replaced his spectacles, he saw that the frown still remained on Harry’s face, though he was looking pointedly away from where the creature writhed and cried weakly upon the stone floor.

              “Do not pity the dead, Harry,” the old wizard admonished softly, resting a hand gently on Harry’s shoulder. “Pity the living, and above all, those who live without love.”

              Harry loathed Voldemort, as much as anyone else. But he did not want to watch the stunted creature that Voldemort had become writhing in agony on the cold marble floor, either. As much as Voldemort probably deserved all his suffering and then some, still Harry couldn’t stand bearing witness to it, not like this. The creature reminded him far too much of a monstrously afflicted human infant, and it was difficult to look at this pitiful thing and see Lord Voldemort, most evil dark wizard of the modern age. Its soft cries dug into Harry’s nerves like splinters.

              “I have to do something,” he said suddenly, shrugging off Dumbledore’s hand to jump to his feet. “You said yourself, if I’m alive, then he’s not dead yet. I can’t just sit here and listen to it go on like that.”

              “Harry…” the professor trailed off, almost imploringly, but he did not move to stop him as Harry approached the thing curled beneath the seat once more. The closer he got, the more his revulsion grew. He stared down at it, the afflicted, deformed thing that was, he supposed, all that was left now of Voldemort’s soul. This near, it had a subtle but awful odor, like a faint whiff of all of the most rank forms of decay imaginable, combined into one concentrated stench; Harry felt like retching, but instead he held his breath and thought quickly.

              Dumbledore seemed to think that there was nothing anyone could do for this Voldemort-creature-thing. Harry thought for a moment. Then he closed his eyes, determined, remembering the way that clothes had appeared nearby as soon as he had wanted them, and focused on his desire to make the creature more comfortable.

              No sooner had Harry formed the thought, than the creature at his feet was no longer curled naked and shivering upon the marble. Now it was swathed in a fuzzy blue baby blanket (which Harry had not even realized he was picturing until it popped into being) and tucked securely into a plain cardboard box. Harry blinked in surprise at his mental handiwork. The professor seated behind him made a soft sound of surprise as well. He was glad that he hadn’t had to actually touch the creature; still, had he really done that, merely by thinking about it?

              All that was still visible of the creature was its nose—which Harry noted with some queasiness was flat and broad, with slits for nostrils, like a snake’s—and its mouth, so the wretched thing could still take in air. The creature had begun to cry more heartily when he had approached, but now its cries had lessened from wails to fitful whimpers, hardly audible even in the stillness.

              Harry thought perhaps it had fallen into a fitful sleep, but he did not want to get any closer to the thing to confirm that idea, so he quickly backed away, taking his seat next to Dumbledore. Harry glanced at him from the corner of his eye, expecting another admonition or some expression of disappointment, but to his astonishment, Dumbledore’s eyes were wet yet again. Harry hastily looked away as the professor dabbed his eyes again and gave Harry a watery smile.

              “That was an impressive exercise of mental will, Harry. And also a very kind and compassionate gesture. Once again you prove that you are by far a better man than I could ever hope to be.”

              Harry felt himself flush and looked down to fiddle with his robe sleeve, unsure how to respond to such a glowing endorsement of his character. “It was just a blanket,” he muttered, glancing at the swaddled bundle again. “The floor is cold.”

              Harry was struck by a sudden idea.

              “Sir, is this place…real? Or is it all happening in my head?”

              Dumbledore smiled at him widely. “Of course it’s happening inside your head, Harry. But why on earth should that mean it is not real?”

              Harry shrugged, but he was strangely jubilant nonetheless. Voldemort might not really deserve to be helped, but that wasn’t the point; possibilities suddenly blossomed in his mind’s eye, full of promise. He sensed that although he had been here a long while, time was passing incredibly slowly back in the world of the living. Harry had all the time he could need here, and if he could imagine any ways to protect any of the people still alive, or even help any of the people already dead—then here in this place of the mind, he might be able to turn those ideas into a reality.

              Quiet fell between the two men once more, this time a more companionable silence than previously, yet still a heavy silence, charged with anticipation.

              “Voldemort’s got the Elder Wand.”

              “True,” the old man agreed calmly, as if he had been following Harry’s train of thought exactly. Harry fell silent again, still thinking hard.

              Though he kept his gaze fixed on the stone floor, Harry could feel the headmaster’s piercing stare, making him feel no more opaque than a pane of window-glass, just like every other time when the full force of that bright blue gaze had been directed at him. 

              Now, after all that had happened, after all he’d learned since the last time he had squirmed under that stare, he knew that the near-omnipotence he had often credited Dumbledore with was more the product of Harry’s imagination than his intuition. The old wizard sitting next to him was wise and powerful, but he was only a man, and even in this place, he could not know all, nor see all. Sometimes it was too easy to think that Dumbledore had all the answers, and could do no wrong unless it was deliberately done. Yet for all his cleverness and wisdom, Harry could see now that Professor Dumbledore was neither more omnipotent nor more omniscient than—well, than Harry was himself.

              Harry glanced at the bundle of blankets hiding the still-struggling remains of Voldemort from view. “What’s going to happen to this bit of Voldemort, then? When I go back, he’ll come back too, right?”

              Dumbledore nodded. “He is what tied you to life after he used the Killing Curse on you again, so you will return through that connection. But once you are in your living body again, that connection will be severed for good. And when Voldemort dies and the last piece of his soul still remaining within his physical form becomes separated from his body, I imagine it will return here. Well, perhaps not here, precisely, but somewhere in-between as this place is. A purgatory, if you will. I think it likely that he will become trapped, between life and the afterlife, forever; without all the pieces of his soul, he cannot ever go on, nor find peace or rest, and I do not expect he will have the strength to rally his soul fragments from wherever they have ended up in purgatory, let alone the amount of remorse it would take to even attempt to heal his mutilated soul.”

              Harry took a deep breath. “I almost can’t believe I’m going to ask this,” he muttered to himself; then, louder, “In that case, Professor, could you do me a really huge favor?”

              “Anything within my power is yours to ask for, Harry,” Dumbledore replied warmly.

              “Well, you say that,” Harry muttered again. Did he really want to do this?

              Maybe it was more that he didn’t want to _not_ do it. To leave Voldemort to his fate, without lifting a finger to help him…it was no more than Voldemort deserved. But Harry did not want to be the one to decide what Voldemort deserved, or the one to decide that he was beyond saving.

              “I’d like you to see if you can put all the pieces of Voldemort onto a train, or whatever, so that he can move on if he wants to try. Can it be done, do you think, sir?”

              Dumbledore frowned thoughtfully, tapping his bearded chin with one long finger. “Yes, I think it is possible,” he answered slowly. “I can certainly try. But I do not know if it will do him any good. The soul was never meant to be mangled and mutilated the way that his has been. Even if all the pieces of his soul are brought together, it may still not be enough for his soul to continue on, nor may it be possible for his soul fragments to ever be merged back into a whole.”

              “Maybe so, sir. But I know for sure that rotting in purgatory in scattered pieces will never do him any good either, nor anybody else. And I think abandoning the soul fragments here without hope of ever rejoining would be a more terrible punishment, and of a more permanent sort, than I’d be willing to live with, personally.”

              “Perhaps you are right, my boy. I shall do my best, I promise. It would be comforting to know that even someone as far gone as Tom Riddle may yet be redeemed, should he desire it.”

              “Yes, sir,” Harry agreed quietly.

              Dumbledore patted his arm gently and gave it a brief squeeze, then stood. “Well, Harry. Unless you have any more questions or requests for your old teacher, I suppose that we are finished here. Thank you, my boy, for all you have done. I hope—”

              Dumbledore paused and cleared his throat, then went on, more quietly. “I hope that in time you may see your way to forgive me for the pain I have caused you. I had good intentions, always, although I am sure you know those may as easily pave a path towards damnation as towards redemption. It is no excuse, but I never meant you harm, my boy. I only ever wished to protect you, and allow you a chance at as much of a normal, and safe, and happy life as you could possibly hope to attain.”

              Harry nodded, feeling his eyes prickle and his throat tighten as he followed Dumbledore to his feet. As angry and exasperated as he might be with the way Dumbledore had manipulated him and kept him in the dark, it had been good to see him and talk with him again. He had missed him a great deal, this past year, more than he had really been able to allow himself to feel, what with everything going on.

              It was difficult to stay angry with him now that it was time to say goodbye.

               Harry did not trust his voice, so he merely coughed and nodded again, blinking rapidly. Dumbledore seemed to understand what Harry was feeling despite his lack of words; he looked down his crooked nose at Harry fondly, and nodded solemnly at him in return, though his eyes had regained their merry twinkle.

              “I am so very, very proud of you, Harry. You are a fine wizard, and a better, kinder, and stronger man than I had any reason to expect you would become, after a childhood of such loneliness and deprivation as I conspired to give you. I am eternally thankful that it should be so.”

              Harry smiled back at him despite the lump in his throat. “Thank you, sir.”

              “It has been a great honor to have known you, Harry.”

              Dumbledore put out his hand, almost tentatively, as if he thought that Harry might brush it aside. Harry took his hand gently and shook it, and then, impulsively, he pulled the older man in closer for a hug.

              “The honor was mine, sir. Always, the honor was mine,” Harry said, his voice muffled slightly by the taller man’s shoulder as he held Dumbledore tightly for a brief few seconds, before letting him go abruptly and stepping back a couple of paces, feeling suddenly embarrassed at the display. His old professor looked very surprised, but also rather pleased, and he squeezed Harry’s shoulder once more, with feeling.

              With a farewell wave, Dumbledore turned and disappeared into the swiftly encroaching mist.

              Harry stepped into the mist without looking back. It was easier to see the true shape of reality here, and though he couldn’t comprehend it all fully, Harry knew he would be returning one day, and when he did, it would be as though he had never actually gone. Then he would be able to board that train, and discover whatever lay beyond.

              But until then, he had things to do.

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Chapter 1 – The Keeper of the Thread**

 

              _I broke my promise on a very sharp rock_

_And I was possessed by something quite unfriendly_

_And I was haunted by a demon in my sleep_

_And that’s how I learned how to survive._

                                                        – Andrew Jackson Jihad, “Survival Song”

 

              Harry could see nothing but glowing white fog all around him; he could no longer see the box that held the Voldemort-creature, or even the bench he and Dumbledore had shared a moment before.

              He was unconcerned. The mist seemed to work a bit like the Room of Requirement, pulling his thoughts and desires from his head and shaping itself into what he imagined.

              If it could pull a clean and shining version of King’s Cross out of Harry’s head, what else could it do? He was determined to find out.

              Harry turned slowly in a circle, then turned again. On the third turn, he found that a path had appeared just behind him, winding off into the mist and out of sight. Harry knew without needing to be told that this would lead him back to his living body. Instead of heading down it, however, Harry stayed where he was, closing his eyes and concentrating furiously on what he wanted to find.

              Harry had an idea that Dumbledore would say that the dead ought to be left alone, or something similar. But Harry couldn’t stand how unfair it was—that he should get to live again after dying, while people who had done far more, like Lupin and Tonks and even Snape, didn’t get the same chance. Even if he couldn’t bring back the dead or shield the living, Harry thought he might feel better, at least a little bit, if he tried to do _something._

              He decided to keep his request simple and open-ended, and see if the result from the mist came anywhere close to helping Harry with his goal.

_I need to find a way to help. Something I can do to make things right._

Harry turned slowly in a circle once more, but all he saw was the path back to reality—well, to physical reality, he supposed—stretching out behind him. Slowly, he turned in another circle, and then in another, repeating his request under his breath. But still the only thing the mist showed him was the path back to his body. If he stepped onto it, he was sure he would not be able to return again, so he hovered at the edge, thinking desperately. The mist began to creep closer, eating up the path, and Harry nearly despaired of making the mist show him anything at all, let alone something helpful.

              Just as the mist was about to swallow him, he saw a flash of movement from the corner of his eye and heard a soft _snick_ from that direction. Although Harry knew he was safe here, old habits died hard; he whirled, hand automatically darting for his wand to repel an attack, forgetting that he no longer had it.

              Harry paused mid-motion, mouth falling slightly agape in surprise. A door had appeared, set in a dingy brick wall that definitely had not been there only a moment ago; the motion he’d seen and the sound he’d heard was the door swinging closed, it seemed. Feeling slightly foolish, Harry dropped his wand hand back to his side and approached the door cautiously.

              It was an old-fashioned door, plain wood with an age-darkened patina. It stirred something in Harry’s memory, and he realized with a start that, besides the color, it looked a lot like one of the doors from the entrance hall of the Department of Mysteries.

              As soon as Harry thought of that room of spinning doors, a pair of taper candles popped into existence, one on either side of the door, alight with guttering blue flames just like the ones he remembered lighting the way at the Department of Mysteries.

              This door though, Harry saw, was different from the Department of Mysteries doors in one obvious way; where they had been totally unmarked, the door the mist had created for him had a tiny brass plaque set just above its dingy brass knob, blackened with age. Leaning in to squint, Harry could just make out the worn inscription:

_Keeper of the Thread_

           Even now, with the knowledge of what awaited him back among the living, Harry felt a frisson of the old, familiar thrill of curiosity and thirst for adventure, a pleasant tingling running down his spine. As Harry placed his hand on the doorknob, he felt like a first-year again, opening a forbidden door under cover of his Cloak, still innocent of the real dangers in store for him; back when the thrill of a harmless adventure was still enjoyable without recalling any traumatizing events.

              The battered brass knob turned easily under his hand, unlocked. Harry stepped through into a dim, closet-like space, lit by a single naked electric bulb dangling from the ceiling, caked with dust. It reminded him forcefully of the light in his old cupboard.

              Looking around, Harry saw that the little room was crammed corner-to-corner with tall filing cabinets, all painted a sickly, industrial shade of green. His eyes were quickly drawn to the center of the space, where a woman perched on a battered kick-stool, like the kind Harry remembered seeing at the library in his primary school.

              The woman faced away from the door, her silvery grey hair in a neat braid down her back, but at the click of Harry closing the door behind him, she turned to face him. He was surprised to see that despite her grey hair the woman’s face appeared quite young, though a few lines showed around her eyes and mouth where they crinkled from her smile. She wore a drab brown Muggle dress with a plain white apron tied neatly around her waist, and something about her dark eyes reminded Harry of Dumbledore’s signature penetrating gaze.

              “Hello there,” she said warmly, her smile widening, as if she had been expecting him. He found himself smiling in return.

              In her hands, the woman held a little golden spool. A few strands of shining black thread were wrapped around it. Harry felt his spine tingling, though he had no idea why a mostly-empty spool of thread should affect him so.

              “You’re just in time,” she said, waving him closer. “He’s nearly run out of thread, I’m afraid,” she added.

              “Who is? What thread?” Harry asked through lips that suddenly felt numb. Although he didn’t know what the woman was talking about, he felt cold dread settle into his chest and squeeze his heart.

              The woman turned the golden spool over and glanced at the bottom.

              “Severus Tobias Snape,” she replied, turning the spool end to show it to Harry. Sure enough, there was a little white label with what Harry knew must be Snape’s full name, written in a spidery copperplate hand.

              Harry gaped.

              “You know him,” the woman said. Harry nodded absently, putting out his hand without thinking when she offered the spool to him. It was warm to the touch, he noticed, and when he rubbed the silky black thread between his fingers, it felt strangely alive. Like hair still attached to someone’s head, he thought, and his spine prickled again.

              Another memory from his Muggle school days surfaced; he recalled a teacher reading aloud to the class a story about the Greek myth of the three fates: one to spin, one to measure, and one to cut…

              A horrible certainty riveted Harry, making him clench his hand reflexively around the little spool.

              “Is this thread his…”

              “His life, yes,” the woman finished for him, nodding. “Or, rather, to be more precise, it is a symbolic representation of your friend’s allotted lifespan that has been lifted from your subconscious. And, as you can see, his has nearly reached its end,” she added, pointing with one long, slender finger at the scarce quantity of thread still clinging to the spindle.

              Harry almost opened his mouth to correct her on the “friend” bit, but then his brain seized on the woman’s words— _his has nearly reached its end—_ and he was suddenly overwhelmed by memory, freezing the breath in his lungs.

              The way Snape’s hand had fallen limply away from where it clutched at his ragged, torn neck, trying in vain to stem the blood; how it smacked the floor with a _thunk,_ splattering fresh blood onto Harry’s already bloody, filthy jeans. Snape had demanded Harry look at him, right in the eyes, and he had, and so he had watched as Snape’s eyes grew fixed and glassy, while the pump of blood from his neck slowed, and stopped. And Harry did not think he would ever forget the awful way his legs had twitched, before Snape finally went still.

              Harry felt like he ought to be covered in cold sweat; his hands trembled as he took a deep, shaky breath, trying to dispel the feeling of helpless horror that the memories had brought back. He had been so sure Snape was dead—he died practically in Harry’s arms, how could Harry possibly have mistaken that?

               But if there was still thread on his spool…

              “If this is his life,” Harry said, holding up the spool, “shouldn’t it already have run out? I mean, I saw him die, before I came here.”

              At least, Harry had thought he had. What if Snape was still lying on the floor in the Shrieking Shack, alive and in agony, slowly bleeding to death where they’d left him? Harry felt sick at the idea.

              The woman rose gracefully to her feet and smiled kindly at Harry, taking the thread from him and patting his hand reassuringly. “Don’t fret, dear. Right now he’s in-between, and he won’t be aware of any pain or anything like that there.” She waved a hand, summoning another kick-stool from nowhere and urged Harry to sit down on it with a gentle push on his shoulders.

              “Allow me to explain.” She sat again and smoothed her skirt and apron before folding her hands primly in her lap, the spool cradled between her palms. “First, I’ll introduce myself. I am the Keeper of the Thread.”

              As she spoke, the Keeper began to roll the spool back and forth across first one palm and then the other; Harry’s eyes kept being drawn to the glimmer of light along the spool’s edge, though he listened intently to her words.

              “I watch over the life thread of every person living, and remove their spools when their thread has run out. You say that you saw this man die?”

              She lifted the spool up to her eye and looked at him expectantly through the hole running through the center. Harry tried not to react to this, feeling vaguely as though it might be a test or something.

              “Yeah. At least I thought I did. Now I wonder if he might have been still alive when I left him alone,” Harry admitted, sitting on his hands to keep them from fidgeting as they itched to do.

              The Keeper shook her head, lowering the spool. “That explains how you managed to discover the door to my little workshop, at least in part. It forges a connection, you see, bearing witness to such an intimate thing as another soul’s passing. Tell me, did you happen to be looking into his eyes when it happened?” she asked, leaning forward with interest.

              As she spoke, Harry’s eyes had drifted back to the spool in her hand, and he noticed with a jolt that the quantity of thread had shrunk noticeably since he had first looked at it. Only a few loops of the ink-black thread remained.

              “It’s disappearing!” he cried. “What does that mean? What’ll happen when it’s all gone? If I saw Snape die, why is his thread still running out?”

              The woman peered closely at the spool. “His body is dead, yes. Usually, when a soul’s body dies, that soul’s thread also runs out at the same moment. But sometimes a person dies before their allotted thread ends: an untimely death, if you’ll forgive the witticism.

              “When this happens, usually I cut the thread,” she explained, drawing a pair of long, wickedly sharp golden shears from her apron pocket and giving them a little _snick_ for emphasis. “But this one is unique, very unique indeed. His life was already about to run out when it was cut short. You see, his lifespan was not set for an allotted time, as most people’s generally are. Instead, it was tied to a specific event—actually, to the end of another soul’s thread. That is, if you can still call it a soul, after what he’s done to it,” she said disdainfully, her lip curling in a way that reminded Harry of Snape.

              “Voldemort,” Harry said aloud, and the woman snorted.

              “A foolish, grandiose title for a foolish, ignorant man. No soul’s lifespan is meant to be extended, certainly not by ripping it into pieces.”

              An awful thought came to Harry. “Is his spool here?”

              “Thankfully not,” she replied, with a delicate shudder. “I passed it along long ago to another department to handle, after he committed the first of his…mutilations.”

              Harry almost asked what department, but thought better of it quickly. Time might have little meaning here, but he might still run out of it, and before that happened he needed to understand why the mist had shown him here. Was he supposed to save Snape somehow? What could Harry even do to help Snape if his lifespan had all run out?

              “So, you’re saying that Snape’s life is tied to Voldemort’s somehow? Is it because he’s—well, he was—a Death Eater?”

              “Hmm, yes and no. It isn’t cause-and-effect, but it is related, I believe,” she said, prodding at the strand, then holding the spool up to her ear to listen to it as if it was an old-fashioned telephone earpiece. “Certainly that magic between them has strengthened the connection even more, but it definitely existed well before that…in fact, it seems to have emerged at the very moment Severus Snape’s thread was formed.”

              “So, his thread is still going, because Voldemort’s is? And when Voldemort’s runs out…”

              “Then so too does the thread of Severus Snape,” the Keeper finished when Harry trailed off. Harry closed his eyes, his heart sinking to somewhere around the center of the earth. He had thought sacrificing his own life to end Voldemort’s had been hard; he could not stand the idea of knowingly sealing Snape’s fate instead, while Harry himself walked away unharmed.

              Desperation rose inside Harry, choking him, a huge hand pressing his lungs down flat. “Isn’t there anything that can be done? Can’t his thread be separated from Voldemort’s? Or can we, erm, lengthen Snape’s thread somehow? Couldn’t I just, just give him some of my thread?”

              The Keeper fixed Harry with a sad, stern frown and shook her head. “The connection cannot be broken. Even if it could, his body would still be dead, barring his soul from returning to it. And, as I said, no thread is meant to be lengthened beyond the span allotted.”

              Harry slumped in defeat, staring at his trainers without seeing them. He had been so close, Harry thought, but it seemed there was nothing he could do for Snape after all. The thought that Snape might yet be saved had electrified him with hope; only now that his hope had been crushed did Harry realize how keenly he felt his debt to Snape, and how much he wished to repay that debt.

              Harry hardly knew how to process the things he had witnessed in the memories Snape gifted to him with his last few breaths. The awfulness of Snape’s past had been driven out of Harry’s thoughts somewhat by the death sentence he received in the final memory, but now that his own crisis had mostly passed, Harry could feel pity again for the difficult and painful youth that Snape seemed to have suffered. Harry could not help but feel a bit guilty, too, even if his guilt was illogical, recognizing that much of Snape’s misery in the memories he’d shared had come from Harry’s parents, in one way or another. No wonder Snape had always hated the sight of him. Harry must have been a constant reminder to Snape of his most terrible regrets, his greatest humiliations, and his most intense source of grief.

              But Harry could not reconcile the Snape he knew—the cruel and overbearing bully who targeted even his youngest students with his vitriolic ire, who had nothing but contempt for most every person that he knew—with a Snape that could be enmeshed in such a tragic story of unrequited love and loss.

              There was an irony too bitter to appreciate in the fact that if Snape had not been dying, he would never have given Harry such a huge piece of his private history to peruse at his leisure, and yet those memories were probably the only thing that could have convinced Harry of Snape’s true loyalty, after witnessing Snape kill Albus Dumbledore at the top of the Astronomy Tower right before his eyes. Now that Harry’s mind was opened to the truth about Snape, it was too late. The Snape that Harry had known had been merely a single facet of an incredibly complex person, with depths Harry had never even suspected. Depths that Harry would now never be able to get to know…

              Harry thought of the night on the Astronomy Tower, when he had chased Snape down, mad with grief, and tried to duel him on the grounds, to take revenge for what had appeared to be Dumbledore’s murder at Snape’s hand. Harry had never seen Snape look as unhinged as he had during their uneven duel, not even that one time when Harry and Hermione had helped Sirius escape from Hogwarts and Snape lost his chance at an Order of Merlin.

              He had been crazed with rage that night when Sirius escaped, yet on the night of Dumbledore’s death, Snape had been more like a trapped and wounded animal, driven to madness in its agony. Harry himself had not been in any rational frame of mind that night, which would explain why he had pelted across the grounds after Snape without any support and tried to duel him.

              If he had been thinking clearly, Harry might have noticed that Snape had not properly tried to hex him back that night, not until the very end of their duel; he didn’t even cast so much as a Jelly-Legs Jinx, although Harry had been trying his damndest to curse him horribly. Snape had merely blocked all his spells, knocking him down, taunting him, but not harming him at all. Not only did Snape refrain from inflicting any real harm on Harry, he even prevented Harry from casting any Unforgivable Curses during his fit of madness—plus he stopped the other Death Eaters from casting _Crucio_ on Harry from behind while Harry was distracted with Snape.

              Harry had been hopelessly outmatched; but in his rage he had not cared if Snape killed him; he wanted Snape’s blood and would have been happy to draw it with tooth and nail if he hadn’t had a wand handy. Harry got up again and again after Snape knocked him to the ground, taunting Snape in return; he had called him coward again and again, sensing that it penetrated Snape’s defense better than any spell he might use, taking a savage joy in enraging him.

              But then, the way Snape’s expression had twisted into something inhuman with agony, his pain-fueled fury blazing out of control, as Harry dared Snape to kill him like he had killed Dumbledore…

              _“Kill me then, kill me like you killed him, you coward—“_

_“DON’T CALL ME COWARD!”_

              Snape had hexed him then, right in the face, as Harry had been half-hoping he would. Whatever spell he had used, some sort of whip hex, had stung horribly and knocked all the breath from his lungs, but when he managed to get up again, Harry was merely dazed—the hex didn’t even leave a mark on him. Snape had long since escaped across the school boundary and Disapparated away.

              He saw now that it had all worked exactly as Dumbledore had planned. Draco did not have to become a killer, Snape was able to secure his position in the Death Eater ranks once and for all, and Dumbledore was able to die painlessly, before the curse in his withered arm could eat him from the inside out. It was a perfect plan. Harry could see the elegance of it, though it made him feel about the same as Dumbledore’s plan for himself and the Horcruxes. If even the Order was convinced that Snape was a traitor, his position with Voldemort was at ultimate security, and Snape was clever enough to assist the Order without them even realizing it or being able to identify him as the source.

              Now that Harry looked back, taking Snape’s actions in with a cooler, more logical head, it was appallingly obvious that Snape was no true Death Eater. How could Harry have missed it? The signs of Snape’s true allegiance had always been there, right in front of his face, but his personal hatred of the man had blinded Harry to the truth.

              Snape had often been nasty, cruel, and unpleasant, but if Snape had not had the wit and the fortitude, not to mention the sheer bollocks, to pull off such a brazen triple cross right under Voldemort’s very nose, Harry would certainly have failed in his mission to locate and destroy the Horcruxes. And the Hogwarts students would no doubt be in even worse shape had Snape not been there to shield them from Death Eaters, without anyone ever realizing that was what he was doing.

              Snape had fooled everyone perfectly. All he’d had to do was be an enormous bastard to everyone, and they were more than willing to believe the worst of him, instead of seeing his actions for the smokescreen they really were. Not that it excused Snape’s behavior, not by a long shot, but it did cast it in a new light, one that Harry found he could empathize with.

              If only he’d found out that he was wrong about Snape sooner. But Harry had always been so stubbornly convinced that Snape was evil. Had he been so convinced all along just because Snape disliked him and had been mean to him? Harry did not like to think he was so petty, but it rang with too much truth for him to deny it.

              “If Snape’s thread was tied to Voldemort’s since birth, does that mean that he was destined from the start to follow Voldemort?” Harry finally asked the Keeper, almost afraid to hear her answer.

              “Oh, heavens no,” the Keeper replied hastily, “No, no, no. The conclusion of his existence might have been tied to Voldemort’s, but Severus Snape still possessed the free will to choose the course of his life. The choices he made were his own, entirely. If they brought him closer to Voldemort, they could easily have done the opposite. You yourself have demonstrated that fact quite nicely, Mr. Potter. In fact, your thread was tied to Voldemort’s in a very similar manner, although not from birth.”

              “It was? But it isn’t anymore?” Harry pressed, noting with interest the past tense the Keeper used.

              “Correct, Mr. Potter. Unlike Severus, whose choices coincided with Voldemort’s to bind their fates closer and closer together, your choices, combined with Voldemort’s, placed you further and further in opposition. Each one you made placed you at greater and greater advantage to survive, while each one Voldemort made handed you more and more power to ultimately conquer him.”

              “Oh,” Harry said, not sure what to say to that. It was good to know that he had made mostly good choices in his struggle against Voldemort, but it felt more like luck and good timing than like anything Harry might take credit for. After a moment, Harry continued in a low voice, “It still doesn’t seem fair though. Snape was trapped like me, but I got lucky, and he got shafted.”

              “As you are well aware, young man, life is rarely fair and does not take into account what a person does or does not deserve to experience. Severus Snape’s life is now drawing to a close, and that is that,” replied the Keeper firmly.

              There was silence for a minute; the naked bulb overhead flickered, making a faint buzzing sound that seemed loud in the otherwise silent room.

              “Unless…”

              Harry’s head jerked up. The Keeper was tapping her index fingernail against Snape’s spool with a pensive air. She fixed Harry with a beady eye, reminding him powerfully of Professor McGonagall; Harry half expected her to don a pair of square-rimmed glasses and peer at him over them in appraisal.

              “Tell me, boy. How far would you really go to keep this man alive? Think carefully, Harry James Potter, and answer honestly. For the life of Severus Tobias Snape, what would you be willing to sacrifice in return?”

              Harry felt the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck stand on end.

              _What would Snape do, if it were me?_

              He swallowed, finding his mouth suddenly dry.

              “Anything,” Harry answered, meeting the Keeper’s dark eyes and holding them with a sure, steady gaze. Her lips stretched slowly into a big, wicked grin, and Harry’s heart squeezed painfully as he suddenly recognized Sirius in the expression.

              “You say that,” she said, examining her fingernails idly and glancing up at him coyly through her eyelashes. “But when you know what is involved, you may think differently.”

              “Tell me,” Harry demanded. “Whatever I need to do to save him, it’s as good as done. I’ll swear an oath, sign a contract, whatever you like.”

              “That won’t be necessary. I merely want to be certain you know exactly what will happen. As I have already mentioned, the thread is merely a symbol. Indeed, everything you see around you at this moment is, of course, all illusion, created from magic, some suggestions from your subconscious and your memories, and a bit of imagination to keep things lubricated. The end result is like a powerful optical illusion: your mind’s not equipped to process what it’s actually perceiving, especially without the sensory input it is used to interpreting from your physical body, so the Main Office converts everything into something that your human consciousness can comprehend.”

              Harry blinked rapidly, wishing suddenly that he had Hermione here to translate for him. The Keeper smirked at his expression and waved a hand dismissively.

              “Never mind that. The point is, it is not as simple as merely cutting off a bit of your thread and tying it onto his. To stop Severus Snape’s ‘thread’ of life from running out, I will connect yours with it, which will create, from both of your remaining threads, a single strand on a single spool, shared between you both. That is, by weaving the threads together, I am actually, in a very real sense, weaving your lives together as one. This sacrifice will restore Severus Snape to life as long as you remain alive, but it will have consequences for you both, consequences that you may find at times disturbing, awkward, even frightening.

              “Understand this, Harry James Potter: if you do this, then you and Severus Tobias Snape will be permanently connected for the rest of your life, possibly longer, in spirit and in body, in a very intimate and personal way. What happens to one of you, happens to both. Your breath will fill his lungs; his blood will mingle in your veins. It will affect you on every level: physical, mental, spiritual. The connection will likely result in episodes of shared emotions, thoughts, and even dreams between the two of you.

              “Furthermore, nothing can ever diminish the link between you once it is forged: not time, nor distance, nor discord or strife between you. In a sense, it will be like a marriage—”

              Harry choked on his own (imaginary?) saliva in shock, spluttering incoherently. Sacrifice was one thing, but if Snape came back from the dead to find himself married to Harry Potter, Harry had a feeling that his life expectancy would soon be dropping to zero, if not lower.

               “—of your souls. Though I predict that your relationship will most likely remain platonic,” the Keeper continued, her eyes twinkling and lips twitching in an expression of unholy amusement just barely kept in check. Harry breathed a sigh of relief. He wanted to save Snape, but preferably without becoming his weird bonded soul-mate, or something equally repulsive along those lines.

              “Still, there’s always a possibility. This type of intervention happens extremely rarely. Hardly ever, now that people no longer pay homage to the old gods as they once did. Really, anything at all could happen, so you should be prepared for all outcomes.”

              Harry suppressed a groan. The Keeper’s warnings were beginning to make Harry question himself. He was fine with sacrificing a portion of his allotted life, or even sharing his entire life force with Snape if that was what it would take to save him, but he was not at all certain how Snape himself might feel about the situation.

              For all Harry knew, given the choice between death and a life tied forever to Harry, Snape might very well prefer staying dead.

              “I don’t know,” Harry said slowly, as he tried and failed to picture what a shared existence with Snape might even be like. “I think Snape might murder me if I make him have to put up with me for the rest of his life. He probably wouldn’t even care that killing me would kill him too,” Harry finally admitted, rubbing the back of his neck ruefully.

              The Keeper chuckled. “Perhaps you’d be surprised. People will suffer a lot in the interest of staying alive for a while longer. The will to survive is a great deal stronger than a personal grudge.”

              “Maybe _you’d_ be surprised. Snape’s really good at holding a grudge.”

              “In any case, we cannot ask him what he would choose,” the Keeper said. “You are here. He is not. The decision is yours to make, and yours to live with as well.”

              Harry took a deep breath and reached for Snape’s spool, which the Keeper handed over without protest. Harry held it tightly, squeezing it in his closed fist, as if he was hoping it might give him some sign of what to do.

              “What about the other spools, ma’am? Surely Professor Snape’s isn’t the only one that’s about to run out soon. Where are the other ones?”

              The Keeper glanced over Harry’s shoulder, mouth set in a grim line, and Harry turned around slowly, dread wrapping around his heart in an icy band. A table had appeared behind him, and it was stacked with dozens of spools, bearing thread in a multitude of colors and textures and thicknesses. All were nearly empty. As he watched, the last bit of emerald green thread slipped away from a spool standing on one end on the table edge nearest to him. The spool vanished with a faint little pop. Harry felt his heart curl in on itself like a dry leaf, burning up and crumbling to ash.

              “Are they all from the battle at Hogwarts?”

              The Keeper nodded solemnly, resting a gentle hand on his shoulder. “I am sorry, Harry. I regret to say that there is nothing you can do to help them. Nor can you rescue any of those whose spools have already emptied. Their time has come.”

              Harry felt numb. All those spools, each one a person with hopes and plans, a girlfriend or a boyfriend, pets, family and friends, a best spell, a favorite flavor of ice cream…. and if Harry had not chosen to go to Hogwarts today, if he had waited for the students to go home for the summer, or…

              Harry shook his head to clear it, fiercely. Thinking about “what ifs” would do him no good. If he had waited, he might have lost his chance at the diadem forever, or he might have missed his opportunity to receive Snape’s message from Dumbledore about Harry’s scar.

              “Because your lives have been bound up with Voldemort’s so intimately, you and Severus Snape share a special affinity,” the Keeper continued gently. “With the strong connections forged between your soul, Severus’s, and Voldemort’s, it is just barely possible for yours and his to merge. It will not be easy, yet it would be impossible with any other two souls.”

              Harry thought hard, feeling his heart rate speed up.  He couldn’t be sure what the right choice was, but deep down he knew that, as with most of his important decisions, his mind was already made up. The only acceptable choice makes itself known almost right away, Harry had found; for him, the decision time was not spent actually choosing, but on reconciling himself with his choice.

              “I’ll do it,” Harry said, clearly and firmly, handing Snape’s spool back to the Keeper of the Thread. “Go ahead and do whatever it is you have to do to, er, bind us together.” The Keeper nodded, and began searching through file cabinets. Harry watched her bustle about the office without really seeing her, his mind a dazed jumble. Only hours before, though it felt like days, Harry had been hoping for Snape to die horribly, even wishing he could be the one holding the wand.

              Maybe it was selfish for Harry to go ahead with this plan without Snape’s consent, but Harry could not go back now that he knew it was possible. If he could only save one person, so be it; and if Snape didn’t like being saved by Harry, at least he would be alive to express his displeasure.

              A vision of Snape’s likely reaction to the news filled Harry’s head, and he was seized with a mad urge to laugh and an equally powerful urge to flee. This was going to be a hundred times worse than the Pensieve incident, he already felt it. Perhaps Snape would simply kill him on the spot after Harry broke the news to him, and put them both out of their misery.

              The Keeper returned at last, holding a spool wrapped with a fat quantity of pale gold thread. It was the exact same shade as the Polyjuice potion the Order had made using a bit of his hair last summer, and he knew without needing to look that his own full name was written on the spool’s end.

              “This is all highly irregular, of course,” the Keeper commented as she licked first her index finger and then her thumb. “But I really think the extenuating circumstances warrant an exception to be made, just this once.”

              With that, she grasped first the end of Snape’s thread, now so short only one coil passed around the spindle, and then the end of Harry’s thread between her moistened fingertips, and twirled them together with one deft twist of her fingers.

              As Harry watched, the thread shivered to life in the Keeper’s hands; his own gold thread unraveled rapidly from its spindle, while Snape’s black thread lengthened rapidly and twisted itself around his as it grew. The spindle that had held Snape’s thread seemed to grow slightly, while Harry’s vanished with another tiny pop as the last of his thread fell away and was woven with Snape’s around the spindle of his spool.

              Finally, the Keeper held up a single spool for Harry’s inspection, its spindle thickly wrapped with a respectable length of black-and-gold thread. Harry accepted it gingerly, turning it over to see that it now bore both their names on its base. He rubbed the end of the thread between his own thumb and forefinger; as far as he could tell, the threads were woven as tightly together as if they had been spun that way from the start.

              The Keeper took the spool back from him gently and slipped it into her apron pocket.

              “Well, Harry James Potter. I believe you have achieved what you came here to do. We each have work to do, and yours is not to be found in my workshop any longer, as delightful as it would be to continue to have your company.”

              Harry nodded absently. He had done all that he could. It would have to be enough. He did feel better, although the sight of all those spools, each one an innocent person caught between his and Voldemort’s war for survival, was an image he suspected would feature in his bad dreams for many nights to come.

              The Keeper crossed to the door and opened it for him with a flourish. Outside the Keeper’s workshop, the mist waited to swallow him and cast him back out in the land of the living. At the threshold Harry hesitated before putting out his hand. The Keeper shook it warmly, beaming at him, her crinkled eyes resembling Hagrid’s when he smiled.

              “Be patient, Harry Potter, and you will be rewarded,” she said, and winked. It seemed to Harry like a strange way to say goodbye, but he only bowed his head in acknowledgement, and stepped into the mist that would take him home.


	2. Chapter 2 – Victory

**Chapter 2 – Victory**

 

              It was over.

              Harry Potter stood, his arm still raised from catching the Elder Wand as it flew out of Voldemort’s hand and into the palm of its true master. The fiery gold rays of sunlight just cresting the horizon blazed through the eastern windows of the Great Hall, bathing him in light.

              Voldemort’s body lay crumpled on the floor, in the shadows where the dawn light had not yet reached. In the moment of stunned silence that followed, Harry had time to look up from his enemy’s corpse and turn his eyes up to the enchanted ceiling. The sky it showed was gorgeous, glowing and rosy towards the east, shading from dusky lavender to deep blue in the west.

              For that brief moment, despite all his exhaustion and grief, Harry’s heart was filled with serenity, his mind filled with wonder at the beauty of the sunrise.

              He was glad he hadn’t missed it.

              And then the Hall exploded with sound, as it seemed to dawn on everyone at once that the battle was over and they had, against all reason, won. Shock gave way to cheering and screaming and whoops of delight. As one the crowd rushed forward into the center of the Hall, breaking the circle they had formed around the two wizards and bearing down on Harry.

              Ron and Hermione reached him first, the momentum of the crowd behind them nearly knocking all three of them over as they threw their arms around Harry. Wizards and witches alike were sobbing and hugging and shrieking in delight. Ron was yelling something in Harry’s ear that he still couldn’t make out over the din, making his ears ring painfully, but he couldn’t be bothered to mind. Gratitude swelled inside him, and relief flooded through him, and he grinned and let loose his own yell of triumph.

              They’d made it, they’d really made it. His best friends had stood with him almost the whole way, and miraculously they had managed to emerge whole on the other side. He let go of tension he had forgotten he was even carrying, feeling lighter than he had felt in years.

              Someone set off a Weasley’s Whiz-Bang, and it zoomed around the room emitting a high squeal; people ducked and continued celebrating. Harry had never seen anyone actually jumping for joy until now. He had half a mind to join them.

              The weariness that had lifted temporarily in his elation settled back on Harry with a vengeance; it was all he could do to stand, buffeted on all sides by people all trying to talk to and touch him at once. He felt like he was in the eye of a storm, roaring with joy and grief all around him.

              The sun was rising, blinding them all with its dazzling rays as it climbed over Hogwarts. Suddenly Harry remembered Snape, presumably still in the Shack, where Harry and Ron and Hermione had left him. He was desperate to escape the mass of people and get to him, to see if it had actually worked.

              But it was impossible; there was no way he could slip away from all these people, as attuned as they were to him. Everyone wanted to shake his hand, to hug him, to thank him and to tell him of what was happening outside the castle as the news of Voldemort’s defeat spread.

              Harry found himself sitting at a bench, not quite remembering how he had ended up there, watching Flitwick and McGonagall float Voldemort’s body out of the Great Hall, to wherever the Death Eaters’ bodies were laid out, Harry guessed. His exhaustion lay on him like a heavy blanket, muffling everything and gluing him to his seat.

              “I’d want some peace and quiet, if it were me,” said a soft voice in his ear. Harry turned his head. Luna was sitting next to him, smiling slightly. Harry returned her smile. He was happy to see she looked much better than she had when last he’d seen her, after her stint in the Malfoys’ dungeon.

              “I’d love some,” he replied, surprised by the hoarseness of his own voice.

              “I’ll distract them all,” she said. “Use your Cloak.”

              Before Harry could thank her, Luna hopped to her feet and ran over to the nearest window. “Ooh, look, a Blibbering Humdinger!” she cried loudly, pointing. Everyone nearby turned away at the sound of her voice, and Harry quickly threw the Cloak over his head.

              It took a great deal more effort than he thought it ought to have done, but after bracing himself carefully against the table behind him, he was able to lever himself to his feet. Invisible, he was finally able to weave his way through the throng of people without being stopped. He was swaying slightly, but everyone he bumped into seemed not to take notice.

              Harry spotted the Weasleys, sitting a few tables away, and his heart squeezed painfully at the sight of the family so solemn and subdued. Grief made them look even more similar than they already looked. From now on, any table the Weasleys sat at would be missing a ninth place. Harry thought of the pile of spools in the Keeper’s workshop and winced.

              He spotted Ginny, leaning against her mother with tears dripping slowly from the tip of her nose. There would be time for them to talk later. Right now he would only be intruding, and besides, he had his own urgent business to attend to.

              He continued down the aisle between tables, searching for Hermione. He spotted Neville, eating a piece of toast and gesturing enthusiastically, the Sword of Gryffindor gleaming on the table beside him, surrounded by people listening raptly as he recounted how he sliced off Nagini’s head.

              A few tables down, huddled together and looking as though they were afraid of being noticed, were the Malfoys. Narcissa, between nervous furtive glances at the other occupants of the Hall, was trying to coax Draco to eat some porridge, and Lucius was sitting on Draco’s other side, one arm stretched protectively around his wife and son, the other under the table. Probably clutching a wand, if he’d managed to acquire a replacement for the one Voldemort took from him.

               Looking away, Harry spotted Ron getting up from his family’s table and heading down a different aisle than Harry’s. Squeezing through a gap between tables, Harry cut across to follow and finally spotted Hermione’s hair, still windswept and snarled from their impromptu dragon ride and undignified dismount the day before.

              She was sitting a little way apart from the rest of the crowd; Harry could see her head tilt and then shake as Ron said something into her ear. Ron glanced around the room with a frown, probably looking for Harry, before sitting next to Hermione. Harry managed at last to make his way over to where they were seated.

              Half-convinced that if he bent down to whisper in their ears he might not be able to get upright again, Harry instead tapped them both on the shoulder. They looked around in surprise, but no one else was paying enough attention to notice.

              “It’s me,” he muttered, trusting to the general hubbub around them to keep his voice from carrying beyond them. “Come with me?”

              At once they rose from the table and flanked Harry as they slipped unnoticed from the Great Hall. For the first time, Harry was able to stop and look at the damage from the battle marring the entrance hall. The marble floor was scorched and even deeply gouged in a few places, great chunks of marble had been torn from the staircase and were strewn as rubble all around, and though the bodies of the wounded and slain had been removed there were still smears and spatters of blood visible here and there.

              Harry took a deep breath and turned away. Taking Ron and Hermione’s hands, he led them through the castle’s main doors (one of which was splintered and hanging askew in the archway) and down the steps. The lawn was green and sparkling in the morning sunshine; by the time Harry judged them far enough away from the castle to talk freely, his socks and trainers were damp with dew.

              Harry pulled down his hood so that his friends could see his face, and tried to smile in spite of his weariness and grief. Somewhere in the castle behind them, Fred and Lupin and Tonks and so many others were laid out in a quiet room; the knowledge stabbed at him like a hot knife, and Harry thought his smile was probably more of a grimace.

              Hermione gave him a tremulous smile in return and hugged him again tightly, while Ron, unable to speak through the trembling of his mouth, gave Harry a nod and clasped him tightly on the shoulder, fumbling slightly before he found it by touch.

              “Well, you did it, mate,” Ron croaked after a long moment, as Hermione drew back and wiped her eyes. “Not that I ever doubted you for a moment,” Ron added with a crooked smile, and Harry gave a huff of silent laughter, patting Ron’s hand with his own invisible one. They stood quietly for another long moment, until finally Harry dropped his arms back to his sides and his friends drew back, watching him expectantly.

              Harry drew in another deep breath, letting it out in a whoosh. He owed an explanation to Ron and Hermione. They deserved the whole story, and he would explain everything that had happened to him after they’d been separated and he’d slipped off to view Snape’s memories. At this particular moment though, he didn’t think he could even begin to tell it properly, he was so dead on his feet.

              “I’ve got a lot to tell you,” he finally said, “but it’s a long story that’s going to have to wait. I’ve got to go to the Shrieking Shack.”

              They both blinked at him in surprise, then exchanged a glance with each other; Ron looked confused, Hermione worried.

              “Okay, we’ll come along. But why do you need to go back there?” she asked, Ron nodding in agreement. Harry glanced back and forth between them.

              “I have to fetch Snape and bring him back here.”

              “ _Snape?_ What for?”

              Hermione elbowed Ron hard in the side before Harry could respond, causing him to swear loudly. She glared at him.

              “Didn’t you hear what Harry said while he was facing off with Voldemort? Professor Snape was on our side this whole time! Of course we can’t just leave him there, Harry,” she continued, as Ron rubbed his side and scowled. “But I think gathering his…his body…can wait, or at least we can do it without you while you rest. You look awfully pale. Were you hurt?”

              Harry shook his head. “No, I’m fine. Just really tired. You don’t understand, though. Snape’s not dead. He’s alive out there, and he needs help.”

              Ron and Hermione gaped at him. Their expressions were so alike it might have been funny, had Harry been in the mood to laugh.

              “But Harry…” Ron finally said, with a glance at Hermione, “we saw him die. Didn’t we?”

              Hermione nodded, and she and Ron shared another worried glance. Harry was too tired to argue, so he tried a different tack.

              “I know. I know how it sounds. This is all part of that long story I mentioned I needed to tell you, though,” he replied, continuing to walk across the lawn towards the Whomping Willow. Hermione and Ron followed without argument, after a split-second hesitation.

              “Well, what’s the short version, then?” asked Ron as they walked.

              “Well, I suppose you know I went into the Forest and gave myself up to Voldemort,” Harry began, nearly stumbling over a hillock and barely managing to catch himself. Hermione sidled up to his side in what she no doubt considered an unobtrusive manner; Harry resisted a smile as she hovered at his elbow, ready to steady him if he tripped again.

              “Yes, and we really need to discuss _that_ at some point also,” she said darkly, and the urge to smile abruptly faded.

              “I had to do it, Hermione. In Snape’s memories, besides seeing how and why he became a spy for the Order, I also saw him and Dumbledore talking about my scar and its connection to Voldemort. The reason I could tell what he was thinking and feeling and even see what he saw sometimes was because I had a bit of Voldemort’s soul attached to mine. I was his accidental Horcrux, the one he never knew about and never intended to make.”

              Hermione gasped and stopped dead in her tracks, staring at Harry in horror.

              “Wait, steady on. You’re a Horcrux? But doesn’t that mean…” Ron trailed off, his face going white, making his freckles stand out livid across his cheeks.

              “Yeah,” Harry said heavily. “In order to kill Voldemort, I had to die too, or else the piece of him inside me would keep him from ever truly dying. Dumbledore knew, or at least he suspected, all this time.”

              His friends stood in shocked silence for a moment, struggling to take this in. Harry cleared his throat awkwardly, and they resumed walking.

              “Anyway,” he continued, “I went out to the Forest after I finished watching Snape’s memories. I let Voldemort strike me down. But it didn’t work. Instead of killing me, because of the bond we shared, he ended up destroying the bit of his soul inside me instead. We both got knocked out for a few seconds, I guess. But while we were out…”

              By this time, they had reached the Whomping Willow. Harry paused in his storytelling as Hermione floated a twig under the tree’s whipping branches to press the knot on the truck. The branches froze, and the three climbed quickly into the earthen tunnel, Harry took up the rear, stopping to wriggle out of his Cloak and shove it into his robe pocket as he went.

              “I suppose we must have been dead for at least a second or two,” he continued as they crawled on hands and knees, occasionally brushing against dangling tree roots and bringing a spill of dirt down upon their bent heads. “I know it seemed a lot longer than it actually was, because when I woke up again back in my body, the Death Eaters had just begun to react to Voldemort collapsing.”

              “I saw Dumbledore,” he added, and ahead of him Ron gave a low whistle.

              “Were you able to talk with him?” Hermione asked, her voice hushed.

              “Yeah. He explained just about everything. And…I found out that Snape’s not dead,” Harry finished, deliberately trying to give the impression that Dumbledore had told him so. He felt a bit bad for the deception, but now was not the time to try to explain what he had done.

              Especially since he knew their first question would be “Why?” and he was not quite sure how to answer that.

              “It’s probably best we’re going ourselves then,” Hermione mused as they approached the tunnel’s end. “Professor Snape probably has enemies on both sides now, and they might want to take revenge while he’s weakened.”

              Ron shouldered the crate hiding the tunnel exit aside and helped Hermione and Harry climb out and stand. A wave of dizziness struck Harry and he sat on the crate nearest him heavily as his legs gave up on supporting him.

              “Alright there, Harry?”

              “Yeah,” he replied, accepting Ron’s hand to pull himself up again. “Just got a bit dizzy. I’m fine.”

              Hermione frowned at him, but then her eyes were drawn to the sight beyond the crates. They shuffled closer, Harry feeling a tremor of nerves run down his spine.

              Snape lay exactly as they had left him, splayed out on his back in a large pool of blood, now sticky and congealed. Two ragged puncture wounds marked his neck, dark with clotted blood. His face was turned away from them.

              Slowly, Harry approached on rubbery legs, feeling a near-overwhelming sense of déjà vu. He almost expected Snape to rear up and clutch at the front of Harry’s robes as he knelt by the man’s head. His hair was bloody.

              With a surprisingly steady hand, Harry checked for a pulse on the not-mangled side of Snape’s neck. For a long moment he couldn’t locate it and almost panicked, feeling as though his own heart might stop in response. Then he felt it, a tiny flutter under Snape’s jaw. He let out the breath he had been holding in a great rush.

              “Shall I conjure a stretcher?” Hermione asked, raising her wand. Harry nodded, and then an idea struck. He nearly called out Dobby’s name before remembering with another pang of grief.

              “Kreacher,” Harry croaked instead, and instantly the old house elf popped into view with a sharp crack.

              “Master Harry called?” Kreacher wheezed. Harry noted that he still had the butcher knife he had led the house elf charge with, in a makeshift scabbard fashioned from a tea cozy, strapped round his waist with a bit of twine. Kreacher’s eyes widened in surprise when they landed on the professor, whom Hermione had just finished levitating onto a floating stretcher.

              “Could you transport us to the hospital wing, Kreacher? It’s an emergency.”

              Kreacher wordlessly reached out and grasped the stretcher and Harry’s wrist with his gnarled hands. Instantly they appeared just inside the doors of the hospital wing with a sharp crack, leaving Ron and Hermione behind. Harry tried to take a step forward but swayed violently as vertigo hit him again; he clutched at Kreacher’s bony shoulder and fought to stay upright and conscious. Black spots swarmed across his vision.

              The beds that the hospital wing normally possessed had all been filled with casualties, and more had been conjured, the privacy curtains all removed to make space for the many injured needing treatment. Healers in St. Mungo’s uniforms bustled about between the beds crowded together in rows, tending to patients. No one had yet noticed their entrance.

              Just then, Madam Pomfrey came hurrying out of her office, arms loaded with rolls of bandages. She spotted them and gave a little shriek of surprise, dropping several rolls of bandages. Shoving the armload at a passing Healer and ignoring his squawk of protest, the nurse rushed over to them.

              “A snake bit him,” Harry told her, suppressing a shuddering yawn with difficulty, as she whipped out her wand and began rapidly casting diagnosis spells.

              Madam Pomfrey gave no sign that she heard. “Healer Smith, get me some blood-replenishing potion immediately! Healer Nancy, I need a bed ready, now!” the nurse snapped, directing Snape’s stretcher before her.

              Harry sent Kreacher back for Ron and Hermione, then managed to stagger over to a bench against the wall and collapsed onto it with a grateful sigh.

              The next thing he knew, Ron was giving his shoulder a little shake.

              “Alright there, Harry? Hermione was right, you are _really_ pale.”

              “I’m fine,” Harry replied muzzily, scrubbing a hand over his face and trying to shake off his sleepiness. “I just dozed off for a minute there. Give me a hand up, I need to go to Dumbledore’s office and fetch Snape’s memories. He’ll be wanting them back, I think.”

              “Oh, no you don’t,” Hermione said firmly, appearing at Ron’s side. “You aren’t going anywhere until a Healer’s looked at you.”

              Harry was too tired to argue, and not really inclined to, anyway. He did feel sort of awful. His mouth was dry, his throat parched, and his head was beginning to throb with slow, wave-like spikes of pain. And he was so, so tired. Harry could not remember ever feeling this tired in his life, not even during the worst of their time on the run. He was cold too, though perhaps that was just the cool morning breeze blowing in through the broken infirmary windows. Harry rubbed at the goosebumps on his arms and yawned again.

              Clearly there were people here in far worse shape than he was. All Harry really needed was some food and a nice long nap. Harry wondered if Kreacher would mind taking him upstairs and bringing him a sandwich there; climbing the stairs to Gryffindor Tower or trying to get a meal in the Great Hall both sounded like more than Harry could manage at the moment.

              Harry watched from across the room as the Healers crowded around Snape started to disperse, apparently deeming him stable enough that they could return to their less seriously injured charges. Madam Pomfrey adjusted the blanket draped over Snape and strode back over to where the three sat, wand already in hand.

              “Let’s have a look at you, Mr. Potter. Any injuries, Mr. Weasley, Miss Granger?” she asked briskly, waving her wand in a complicated pattern over Harry’s head.

              “Nothing much, just some scrapes and bruises. But Harry’s been a bit dizzy,” Hermione answered.

              “I’m not injured, just tired,” Harry repeated as Madam Pomfrey continued to cast diagnostic spells, a frown knitting her brow. “And thirsty,” he added, licking his dry lips with his equally dry tongue.

              “Are you certain you didn’t have any injuries? No wounds, no bleeding whatsoever?”

              Harry shook his head. Madam Pomfrey frowned harder as she drew a potion bottle from her apron pocket and conjured a large drinking glass from thin air. She filled the glass with water from the tip of her wand and handed both glass and bottle to Harry.

              “Here, drink this water and then the blood-replenishing potion. You’re severely dehydrated and anemic, but other than that, nothing’s wrong that a good night’s sleep won’t put right. I suggest you go and get some rest as soon as possible. And I want you to come back right away if you begin to feel the slightest bit dizzy or become suddenly tired,” the nurse added sternly, fixing him with a beady glare.

              “Yes, Madam Pomfrey,” Harry agreed meekly, taking a sip of water and trying to look like a model patient.

              “Good. I can’t find the cause of your anemia and I want to keep an eye on it in case it reappears. It looks as though you lost a liter and a half or so of blood, but I can’t find any evidence of an injury. It’s as if some of your blood just up and vanished,” she finished, still frowning.

              Harry gulped down the last of the water and started on the potion, grimacing at its iron-filings aftertaste. Already he felt much more alive, though just as exhausted. At least now he thought he had the energy to do the one last errand he had before he could find a place to stretch out and sleep, for a week if possible.

              “How is Sn—Professor Snape doing?” Harry asked before Madam Pomfrey could rush off to her next patient.

              “Quite well, all told. I thought it would be much more touch-and-go, with the state he was in when you brought him in, but we were able to make him stable without much trouble. He obviously lost a great deal of blood, but I suppose he had a blood-replenishing potion on him and managed to take it before he lost too much. At any rate, he should recover nicely and be up and about in no time. You said a snake bit him?”

              “Yes. Voldemort’s huge pet snake attacked him,” Harry confirmed, noting that the healer’s eyelids twitched slightly at the name but otherwise her face stayed impassive.

              “I suppose Professor Snape got lucky. Either the snake held back its venom, or You-Know-Who had recently milked her. I found no traces of poison in the wound or his blood stream. With such serious wounds, even a small amount could have been fatal.”

              Harry shivered slightly. He remembered the pain of Nagini’s bites after narrowly escaping her at Godric’s Hollow. It hadn’t occurred to him until now, but he wondered why the same venom that had nearly killed Mr. Weasley when Nagini attacked him at the Ministry had only caused Harry burning discomfort, rather than poisoning his wounds and stopping them from healing. Surely Nagini would have used as much venom on him as possible, if not to kill him then certainly to incapacitate him indefinitely. Not using venom on Snape when Voldemort had specifically ordered her to kill made no sense, either.

              As they took their leave and exited the hospital wing, Harry was relieved, but also uneasy. He knew Snape could not possibly have taken any blood-replenishing potion, nor did he think that it was coincidence that at the same time that Snape needed blood, Harry’s own supply had taken an inexplicable dip. _His blood will mingle in your veins_ , he remembered the Keeper warning him, and shivered again.

              What was done was done, and the consequences would just have to be dealt with as they came. Harry could not rouse himself to any level of real anxiety at the moment. Most of all, he felt the most stupendous relief, and a powerful longing to sleep. But first, he owed an explanation to Ron and Hermione, patiently following him as his feet took him to the headmaster’s office.

              Briefly, telling them as much as he felt he could share while still protecting Snape’s privacy, Harry recounted what he had seen in the Pensieve. As they picked their way around shattered statues and chunks of masonry blocking the halls and littering the stairs, Harry also told them in more detail about what had happened in the Forest. Hermione was particularly shocked by his account of finding the Resurrection Stone inside the Snitch from Dumbledore.

              “You used it? You really used it to bring back your parents?” she cried, dismayed.

              “And Sirius, and Remus. It was the only way I could get past the Dementors,” he told her. “Besides, it wasn’t really like I’d brought them back. More like they came to guide me to the other side.”

              Ron kicked a bit of marble thoughtfully. “So it’s true. The legend of the Hallows. That barmy coot Lovegood was right after all, who’d have guessed?”

              Hermione frowned. “Well, perhaps the artifacts that the legend is based on exist. But I can’t believe that the Peverell brothers actually took them as gifts from Death himself.”

              “Dumbledore said something about the Peverell brothers being powerful wizards who worked together to make the Hallows. The legend about Death probably came later.”

              At last they had reached the headmaster’s office. Since Harry had last seen it, the gargoyle guarding the entrance to the headmaster’s study had been knocked aside; it stood lopsided, looking a little punch-drunk, and Harry wondered whether it would be able to distinguish passwords anymore.

              “Can we go up?” he asked the gargoyle.

              “Feel free,” groaned the statue in reply, waving them up the slowly revolving staircase. They rode it in silence, Hermione and Ron both deep in thought after hearing Harry’s tale. Harry decided it would be best to end it there for now, at least until he had told Snape. Snape ought to be the first to know, and besides, as unbelievable and surprising as the first part of his tale had been, the second part made it seem downright mundane in comparison.

              Harry was not at all sure he could even explain it in a way that would make sense to Hermione and Ron. He felt intuitively that someone who had not visited that in-between world would have a hard time imagining it or understanding what it had been like there.

              They reached the top, and Harry pushed open the door. He noted the Pensieve on the desk where he had left it, but before he could go to it, the room erupted with an earsplitting roar. Harry drew Malfoy’s wand, thinking wildly of curses and returning Death Eaters and the rebirth of Voldemort—

              But it was none of these. All of the many portraits lining the walls had burst into applause upon seeing Harry. Every former headmaster and headmistress of Hogwarts was giving him a standing ovation: waving their hats−and in some cases, wigs−wildly, stamping and whistling and cheering. They reached through each other’s frames to clasp hands; they danced up and down merrily on the chairs in which they had been painted. Dilys Derwent sobbed unashamedly into a handkerchief covered with lurid pink polka dots, while Dexter Fortescue waved his ear trumpet in triumph, grinning and whooping madly; even Phineas Nigellus called out, reedy voice piercing through the rest of the commotion:

              “And let it be noted that Slytherin House played its part! Let our contribution not be forgotten!”

              Harry smiled and waved at them all in return, until his eyes fell on the one portrait he had come particularly to see. Tears were sliding down from behind Dumbledore’s half-moon spectacles and into his long, silver beard, but his face was lit with pride and gratitude, bringing tears to Harry’s own eyes and raising a lump in his throat.

              At last, the portraits began to subside, and waited eagerly for Harry to speak. He directed his words at Dumbledore, choosing them carefully. Exhausted and bleary-eyed though he was, he knew that he needed to make the right decisions now, and he wanted his old mentor’s opinion.

              “The thing you hid in the Snitch,” Harry began, and Dumbledore nodded solemnly, wiping his face. “I dropped it somewhere in the Forest, and I’m not going to go looking for it again. Do you agree?”

              “My dear boy, I do,” said Dumbledore, as the other portraits exchanged baffled and curious looks. “A wise and courageous decision, but no less than I would have expected of you. And no one else knows where it fell?”

              “No one,” said Harry, and Dumbledore nodded, satisfied.

              “I’m going to keep Ignotus’s present, though.”

              Dumbledore beamed. “But of course, Harry, it is yours forever, until you pass it on!”

              Then Harry drew his other wand, the one he had taken from Voldemort, and Dumbledore became solemn again. Harry did not look away from Dumbledore’s face, yet he did not miss the way Ron and Hermione gazed at it in reverence. Even in his befuddled state, Harry did not like that look.

              An idea formed in his mind. With his free hand, Harry dug out the pieces of his old phoenix wand from the moleskin pouch around his neck, the holly halves just barely connected by the thinnest sliver of phoenix feather. He noticed Hermione wince guiltily from the corner of his eye, but gave no sign. Laying the wand pieces upon the Headmaster’s desk, he touched them with the tip of the Elder Wand and whispered, “Reparo.”

              Instantly the wand knitted back together, red sparks flying from its tip as if in jubilation. Harry picked it up gently and felt a sudden warmth in his fingers, as though wand and hand both rejoiced at their reunion. He knew already that the Elder Wand had succeeded where ordinary wands had failed, but, just to test, Harry conjured a stream of purple, lavender-scented bubbles from the phoenix wand’s tip. Hermione gasped in surprise behind him, and Harry smiled at her, tucking his old wand back into his sleeve.

              Harry looked up at Dumbledore, who was smiling at him with enormous affection and admiration, and smiled back sincerely. He could not hold a grudge against the headmaster for his scheming and his manipulations, especially not when they had succeeded so well. In the flush of his success, Harry found it easy to forgive Dumbledore’s trespasses against him.

              “I thought about returning this where it came from,” Harry said, gesturing slightly with the Elder Wand, watching Dumbledore’s expression carefully. “But the more I think about it, the more I think I ought to destroy it.”

              “Destroy it! Are you mad?” cried Ron behind him. “It’s the most powerful wand in the world, mate!”

              “Exactly,” Harry replied grimly. “It’s far more trouble than it’s worth to keep, and far too dangerous to leave lying around. Do you agree, sir?”

              “I believe you have proven that you are a wiser man than I ever was when it comes to these objects,” Dumbledore’s portrait replied, a trifle sadly. “Whatever decision you make, I am confident it is the right one.”

              “Thank you, sir,” Harry said. Dumbledore beamed at him again.

              Harry held the Elder Wand out in front of him, parallel to the floor, and wrapped a hand around each gnarled end.

              “Are you sure?” Hermione asked him.

              “An unbeatable wand,” Ron moaned softly, wistful longing clear in his voice.

              But neither of them made a move to stop him. Harry placed his thumbs against the middle, and quickly, before he could change his mind, thrust them briskly upward. The wand broke neatly in two with a flat, unimportant snap.

              Harry stared at the pieces in his palm for a moment, then tossed them into the fireplace, brushing his hands off with an unconscious grimace of distaste. The pieces of the Elder Wand felt unpleasant to the touch, and the grit from its breaking clung to his palms and made him feel slightly unclean. With his own wand he set the kindling alight, and the trio watched quietly for a moment as the flames greedily clung to the dry wand pieces and reduced them to ash.

              “I think Harry was right,” Hermione said quietly after a moment. Ron nodded after a beat, though he still stared regretfully at the fire.

              Harry suppressed a yawn as he turned back to his solemn companions. There was only one more thing to do before he could rest. Approaching the Pensieve on the desk, Harry picked up the glass vial he had abandoned and coaxed Snape’s memories back inside with the tip of his wand. Harry stoppered the vial tightly and slipped it into the pouch around his neck. It would be safe there until Snape was awake and could accept them back.

              Thinking now only of claiming a four-poster bed back in Gryffindor Tower and perhaps asking Kreacher to bring him something to eat, Harry opened the door for Ron and Hermione, quietly closing it behind them with a nod of farewell to the portraits. Although things were mostly wrapped up, Harry could not help but feel that despite having had enough trouble for a lifetime, he was in store for quite a bit more. Especially once Snape discovered the bargain Harry had struck for them both.

              But that would have to wait, preferably until Harry had slept for at least thirty hours. For now, his work was done.


	3. Chapter 3 – Confession

**Chapter 3 – Confession**

 

              Harry awoke with a start in his own bed in Gryffindor Tower. For a moment he was very confused; a flash of his bedroom at Privet Drive, followed, oddly, by another of a bedroom he didn’t recognize, went through his head. Then he remembered where he was.

              Harry sat up with a groan, scrubbing the sleep from his eyes and scratching his head. His scalp itched terribly; he could not even remember the last time he’d had a proper wash. The room was dark, but the sky through the window was barely beginning to lighten; Harry thought it must be very early. As he lit his wand and looked around, he saw that all the other beds were empty.

              Looking blearily towards his bedside table, Harry saw a bowl of soup, still warm under a charm, and a very large sandwich waiting there along with a tall glass of water. Kreacher must have left them there for when Harry awoke; he had fallen asleep before he could eat anything.

              At the sight of the food, Harry’s stomach roared. He fell upon the food ravenously, and realized that he could not remember the last time he had properly eaten either. How long had he been asleep?

              Wiping crumbs from his mouth, Harry reached for the pouch around his neck and fished out his watch. If he was reading it correctly, he’d been asleep for almost two days straight. Which would explain how badly he needed to go to the bathroom.

              After he washed his hands, Harry paused to stare at his reflection in the mirror over the sink. He looked grimy, he was sporting a patchy growth of stubble, and his hair was too long. Unless he wanted to imitate other wizards and grow it out to ponytail length, he supposed. It might make it lie flat for a change.

              That decision could wait. The first order of business was a long, hot shower.

              When Harry finally emerged from the bathroom, he found a new set of Muggle clothes laid out waiting for him—jeans and a light flannel shirt, with underwear and socks too, although his battered trainers still remained. “Thank you,” Harry said loudly, not sure whether it had been Kreacher or another elf responsible, but hoping they would hear him regardless.

              Harry dressed slowly, lost in thought. What would he do now? For as long as he could remember, his life had had a scheduled rhythm; school and chores with the Dursleys, more school at Hogwarts. Even the past year on the run had had a set agenda—find the Horcruxes or die trying, then kill Voldemort.

              But now school was over, and Voldemort and all his Horcruxes were no more. Harry felt strangely bereft.

              He supposed he could do the Auror program as he had planned, he thought as he shoved his trainers back onto his feet. But somehow the idea was not as appealing as it had once been. He might change his mind later, but for now Harry felt that he’d had enough of fighting Dark wizards.

              But if not that, then what? It was the only thing he’d ever been any good at—well, that and Quidditch. But he couldn’t see himself being a professional Quidditch player either.

              Harry snorted to himself as he checked his buttons and fly. The irony in being worried about what he was going to do with his life post-Voldemort did not escape him. But there was a more immediate concern than how he would keep himself occupied now.

              Snape.

              Harry shivered as he combed his unruly hair. Snape would probably be awake by now, and he probably also knew by now who had brought him to the infirmary. He would want to know how he had survived, and why.

              And Harry was going to have to tell him.

              He was dressed and as presentable as he could get; there was nothing left for him to do to put it off any longer. Harry looked about the room desperately for some excuse to not go directly to the infirmary, and sighed in relief when he spotted the letter on his bedside table. Kreacher must have left it for him when he brought his fresh clothes and took away the remains of Harry’s meal. He would have to remember to thank Kreacher in person soon.

              Sitting down on his bed again, Harry reached for the envelope and tore it eagerly open. A piece of parchment with Hermione’s familiar handwriting fluttered out.

**_Harry,_ **

**_You’ve been asleep for a whole day already, and I didn’t know when you might wake up, so if we aren’t there, don’t worry, we’ve only gone to the Weasleys’. We thought it would be best to let you sleep._ **

**_There’s going to be a memorial service in three days for all the people who died in the battle, including Fred and Remus and Tonks. Andromeda wanted me to ask if you’d come and speak about Remus, since you’re the closest to family he had._ **

**_We’re coming back to the school tomorrow to see what we can do to help Professor McGonagall. They’re making her Headmistress, if you haven’t heard the news yet. And Kingsley has been made the emergency interim Minister for Magic, until an election can be held. I imagine there are a lot of changes at the Ministry to come._ **

              The last line of the note was in Ron’s familiar scrawl:

              _Anyway, you’re welcome to come stay at the Burrow when you’re awake, mate. Give us a Floo call at least, so we know you’re alright._

****

**_See you Monday, if not sooner,_ **

****

**_Hermione_ **

_Ron_

              Harry refolded the letter carefully and slipped it into his moleskin pouch. He sighed deeply. As much as he’d like to go to the Burrow, he had business at Hogwarts.

              The castle was still and quiet as Harry descended the stairs. He crept silently under his invisibility cloak towards the hospital wing, not wanting to risk meeting anyone on the way. Carefully, he eased the door to the infirmary open, praying that Snape would be asleep, that the sound of the hinge grinding slightly would not wake him.

              The infirmary looked empty; everyone else had either been sent to St. Mungo’s or released. But Snape was still there, Harry could feel it. He peered into the gloom and picked out the one bed with curtains drawn round it. Harry approached, drawing the curtain back as slowly as possible so it wouldn’t rattle, his heart thumping.

              Snape was there, eyes closed, his hair black as spilled ink against his pillow. Harry stared, letting out a quiet sigh of relief at the steady up and down motion of his chest under the hospital sheets.

              Suddenly Snape’s eyes flew open, looking directly at Harry. He jumped and dropped the curtain, biting off a curse.

              Snape glared into the darkness, his head cocked to listen.

              “Potter,” he snarled, and Harry’s heart stuttered painfully in alarm. “I know you’re there. I can hear you breathing, you imbecile. What do you think you’re doing, coming here in the middle of the night in that damned cloak to spy on me?”

              Harry froze, then, reluctantly, he pushed up his sleeves and lowered his hood. Snape’s eyes fixed on his now-visible head and his expression twisted with anger.

              “Explain yourself or get out, Potter. In fact, just get out,” he spat, reaching out to yank his curtains closed. Harry hastily grabbed the curtain.

              “Hang on. I’m sorry, Sn−, er, Professor Snape,” Harry blurted. “I wanted to talk to you without anyone overhearing.”

              “What in Merlin’s name for?” Snape said, sounding genuinely baffled.

              Harry fidgeted. Snape gave a weary sigh.

              “If you want to make some sort of dramatic declaration based on what happened the other night, spare me. I am tired and I just want to be left alone.”

              “Er. Sorry,” Harry stammered. Snape did look exhausted. There were huge dark circles under his eyes, and his face was too thin. He even had a few grey strands of hair that Harry didn’t think had been there last time he’d seen him.

              “Are you hungry?” Harry asked suddenly. “I could bring you some food from the kitchens.”

              Snape stared at Harry, eyes narrowed in suspicion. Suddenly his left arm came up from under the sheets, aiming his wand straight at Harry’s face. Harry put his hands up quickly in surrender.

              “Don’t hex me, I’m not armed!”

              Snape did not lower his wand. “What was the first question I ever asked you?” he asked abruptly.

              Harry blinked at him. “Er. I think…you asked me what I would get if I mixed,” he licked his lips, “er, powdered root of asphodel, with, with, an infusion of…willow bark?”

              Snape looked at him, and Harry winced.

              “No, willow bark isn’t right. Hell, I can’t remember, Professor, it was seven years ago!”

              His wand twitched slightly, but his eyes didn’t waver from Harry’s.

              “Your Potions textbook,” Harry said after a beat. “I got it from the cabinet in the classroom. Used it all last year to do well in Slughorn’s class. You signed it the Half-Blood Prince. I didn’t know it was you until you told me that night, by Hagrid’s hut. You remember?”

              Slowly, Snape lowered his wand, still staring fixedly at Harry. Harry lowered his hands carefully.

              “I have something for you,” he said, reaching slowly for the pouch around his neck, so as not to alarm Snape. He summoned the vial of Snape’s memories and held it out to him. Snape took them wordlessly.

              “I am famished, Potter,” he said sullenly after a moment, looking at the vial in his hands instead of at Harry.

              “Okay, sure, hang on, I’ll be right back,” Harry babbled as he started walking backwards, nearly tripping himself over the hem of his cloak in his haste. He fairly sprinted to the kitchen, releasing some of his tension and nerves through the physical exertion. The house elves were already up and at work; they hailed Harry with a great shout and crowded around him, pressing food into his arms before he could even ask.

              Harry walked more slowly back to the hospital wing, burdened as he was with a huge hamper that the elves wouldn’t let him refuse. Snape was sitting upright against a stack of pillows when Harry struggled through the door, arms crossed and a black scowl on his face. The vial he’d given him was nowhere to be seen.

              “It was hardly necessary to fetch the entire pantry,” he grumbled as Harry set the hamper down by his night table with a groan.

              “Yes, well, it was faster not to argue with them,” Harry said, conjuring a tray for him and piling it with food. Snape chose not to reply, instead taking the tray eagerly and falling upon it with more enthusiasm than Harry had ever seen him display towards food. He was glad; Harry didn’t like how hollow and thin Snape’s face had become.

              Harry found that he still had some room himself, and sat down in a chair to peel a boiled egg while Snape concentrated on his breakfast.

              “Want some pumpkin juice?” he asked as he poured for himself from a thermos. Snape nodded, not looking up as he rapidly consumed an enormous croissant with chocolate icing.

              “So,” Snape broke the silence, after draining his glass in three large gulps. “What are you up to, Potter?”

              Harry wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “Why do you think I’m up to something?”

              “Because you would not be here gracing me with your illustrious presence otherwise,” Snape snidely drawled, settling back against his pillows and folding his arms tightly across his chest.

              Harry rubbed the toe of his trainer against the leg of his chair. “How much do you know about what happened, after…?”

              “After I died in the Shrieking Shack?” Snape said, and Harry’s head shot up in surprise. “Nothing until I woke up briefly yesterday afternoon. Poppy told me that you brought me in. She told me that you defeated the Dark Lord. She also congratulated me on my quick thinking for taking a blood-replenishing potion after the snake attacked me. Which I am certain I did not, in fact, do.”

              “Speak, Potter,” Snape demanded, when Harry seemed inclined to go on fidgeting silently. Harry sighed.

              “No, you didn’t take any potion. You bled to death.”

              “Then what am I doing here, very plainly _not dead_ , Potter?”

              “I…” Harry couldn’t say it.

              “You did something to save me. Something you’re afraid to tell me.” Snape brushed crumbs from his sheets. “What was it? Unicorn blood?”

              “What? No!” Harry said, shocked. Snape nodded.

              “No, I didn’t think so. I don’t feel cursed or undead.”

              Harry blinked. Was that…a joke?

              “But you believe I will be angry,” Snape continued, searching Harry’s face. “Tell me,” he demanded.

              “I am! I’m trying. It’s…hard to explain.” Harry sighed deeply.

              “I’ll just start with right after you…yeah. I collected the memories you gave me. Then Voldemort made an announcement that he would give us a cease-fire for an hour, and if I didn’t turn myself over by the end of the hour he was going to kill everyone. We−Ron and Hermione and I−went back into the castle. I went up to the Headmaster’s office to use his Pensieve. After that…I went into the forest and I found Voldemort.”

              Harry noticed that Snape didn’t even blink when he used the name.

              “When he used the Killing Curse on me, we both fell down. I think we were dead, for a few seconds anyway. It felt like a lot longer. I was in this in-between place. I saw Dumbledore there and we talked for a while.”

              Snape’s eyebrows climbed all the way up his forehead, but he didn’t interrupt. Harry continued.

              “Dumbledore told me that Voldemort had killed the piece of his soul that was attached to me when he cursed me, and that I could go back and make sure that he was finished for good. But before I did, I found…something else. There was this place…I can’t really explain it,” Harry said helplessly.

              Snape shook his head. “Just get to the point, Potter. What happened?”

              “I…spoke to this woman. She called herself the Keeper of the Thread. She wasn’t really a woman, though. I don’t know what she was, exactly. She was like one of those Greek myths, you know, the Fates? With the thread?”

              “Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos,” Snape murmured.

              “Yeah. She told me that you weren’t quite dead, but as soon as Voldemort died, you would be. Your life thread was all tied up with his. Just like mine. And then she told me that I could save you, if I tied your life thread up with mine instead. So I did.”

              Snape stared at him, his black eyes unblinking. His expression revealed nothing of his thoughts. Harry squirmed slightly under his unwavering gaze, tugging at his collar unhappily. Why was Snape not saying anything? Did he not believe Harry? Would that be better?

              No, Snape needed to know the truth. And if the Keeper of the Thread was right, they were so closely bound together now that Snape couldn’t ignore it anyway, at least not for long.

              “What have you done, Potter?” Snape finally whispered. Harry looked down at his trainers.

              “It was the only way to save you. I asked her to let me share my life thread with you. She bound our threads together. So now you’re alive again. And you and I are linked by our, uh, life force. Forever.”

              Snape closed his eyes, looking horrified. “The blood,” he whispered. His hands clenched into fists.

              “Get out,” Snape said tonelessly, without opening his eyes.

              “But…”

              “I said GET OUT,” Snape suddenly roared, his eyes flying open. He flung his breakfast tray in Harry’s direction, missing him by a good six inches. Harry shut his mouth with a snap and fled the room, pulling the hood of his cloak back up hastily and ducking in case Snape’s aim improved with the juice glass he had just snatched up to throw.

              Harry took the stairs back up to Gryffindor tower two at a time. He had no idea what to do about Snape, but he was already tired again. Maybe the answer would come to him after a nap.

               It could hardly make things any worse.


End file.
